1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus to combine an additional image with an original image and to output a composite image.
2. Description of the Related Art
When a document is copied or printed from a personal computer, there is available a printing apparatus which prints the document adding additional images such as the company's logo, “CONFIDENTIAL” or “COPYING PROHIBITED”, to the document. The position of the adding additional images is usually specified by a user, and there is known technology that detects a width of margin at a designated position, and combines the images after changing or shifting the scale of the additional image so as to adjust it the width of margin (see, for example, Patent Document 1).    Patent Document 1: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Open to Public Inspection No. Tokkaihei 7-111583
In the above technology, where the additional images are combined automatically, if the composite material where the additional image is combined is an important document, it is necessary to be verified visually the state of image particularly, the state of overlapping of the additional image and the original image again.
For example, in the offices of attorneys/law firms in the U.S.A., legal documents such as court documents are prepared in three sets, one set for submitting to a court, one set for retaining in the attorney's office/law firm, and one set for a client, and as proof of having prepared these three sets of documents, a stamp (called Bates Stamp) having a logo of the attorney's office/law firm, date, and page number is affixed manually in the blank part of each page so that it does not overlap with the original images. When combining these images automatically to reduce the labor of affixing the stamp, because of the importance of legal documents, the output image after combining the images has to be verified by visual inspection, however since the court documents run into a large number of pages, visual inspection work becomes very cumbersome.
The present invention is made in order to solve the above problem, and the object of the present invention is to provide an image forming apparatus that can reduce the burden of carrying out visual verification related to composite images created by adding additional images to the original image.
The above object of the present invention is achieved by the inventions in each of the following items.